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The scientists discovered evidence of water hundreds of kilometers deep. An international research team led by a Goethe University professor analyzes diamond inclusions. The boundary layer between the upper and lower mantles of the Earth is known as the transition zone (TZ). It is located between 410 and 660 kilometers (between 255 and 410 miles) under the surface. The olive-green mineral olivine, commonly known as peridot, which makes up around 70% of the Earth’s upper mantle, changes its crystalline structure at the extreme pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ. At a depth of around 410 kilometers (255...

Research reveals that plate tectonics started on Earth 600 million years before what was believed earlier... Where it was previously thought that plate tectonics started about 2.7 billion years ago, a team of international scientists used the microscopic leftovers of a drop of water that was transported into the Earth's deep mantle - through plate tectonics - to show that this process started 600 million years before that. An article on their research that proves plate tectonics started on Earth 3.3 billion years ago was published in the high impact academic journal, Nature, on 16 July... For their research, the...

**SNIP** Dr. Schuiling’s idea is one of several intended to reduce levels of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, so the atmosphere will trap less heat. Other approaches, potentially faster and more doable but riskier, would create the equivalent of a sunshade around the planet by scattering reflective droplets in the stratosphere or spraying seawater to create more clouds over the oceans. Less sunlight reaching the earth’s surface would mean less heat to be trapped, resulting in a quick lowering of temperatures. No one can say for sure whether geoengineering of any kind would work. And many of the approaches are...

MORE proof that space is amazing, this time from the not-too-distant constellation of Orion, where one star is currently being bombarded with green crystal rain. The embryonic star is described as "Sun-like" - as in our Sun - and named HOPS-38. The crystals are a green mineral called olivine and have been spotted raining down from the clouds of gas engulfing HOPS-68 by NASA's Spitzer infrared detectors. Olivine can be found on Earth, in gemstones and on the green sand beaches of Hawaii. They've also been spotted before by NASA's Stardust and Deep Impact comet-watchers, but this is the first...

But it may not explain the presence of the gas on the Red Planet today.Traces of serpentine found at Nili Fossae on Mars.NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Surprises keep coming from Nili Fossae, a long, deep scar in the surface of Mars. In December last year, scientists reported evidence there for carbonates — minerals that typically form in the presence of water1. Then, in January, reports came that there was a large plume of methane in the area. On Earth the gas is made mostly by animals as a by-product — although it can also be produced naturally in the absence of...

The first use of the tools on the arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit reveals puzzles about the soil it examined and raises anticipation about what the tool will find during its studies of a martian rock. Today and overnight tonight, Spirit is using its microscope and two up-close spectrometers on a football-sized rock called Adirondack, said Jennifer Trosper, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We're really happy with the way the spacecraft continues to work for us," Trosper said. The large amount of data -- nearly 100 megabits -- transmitted from Spirit in a single...